Joe Rogan Weighed in on Why Movie Flops Like ‘Cats’ Are Dangerous
Every year, some movies are released that become instant classics, popular almost right away with critics and fans. Sometimes, the films that achieve this popularity are big-budget blockbusters, other times, they are simple independent films that manage to touch on universal themes or emotions.
Then there are other films that decidedly do not get labeled a success, and in fact, become massive critical and financial disasters.
The 2019 film Cats is one of the latter, a musical adaptation that instantly flopped at the box office — and even months after its release, people can’t stop talking about it, including celebrity podcaster Joe Rogan.
The movie ‘Cats’ was a box-office bomb
For decades, Cats has been a very popular stage musical, featuring music and lyrics by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Therefore, it seemed like a great idea to adapt the stage musical into a film of the same time – starring big-name talents such as Jason Derulo, James Corden, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, and Taylor Swift. The film was released in December 2019 and crashed and burned right out of the gate.
Cats received terrible reviews from critics, who called out the odd-looking CGI, which merged the faces of the voice cast onto animated cats, and the creepy nature of certain scenes. Audiences also hated the film and launched a Twitter campaign against the film.
Multiple sources called out the movie as being one of the worst of the decade as well as the worst film of the year. Cats ended up bombing at the box office and lost money, in spite of the high-powered cast and expensive production budget. Ultimately, it seems as though the movie is one that everyone involved prefers to forget completely.
When did ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ podcast launch?
“The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast launched in 2009 and has become one of the most popular free podcasts in the world. Rogan utilizes his outspoken, often brash personality to very entertaining effect, and regularly interviews a wide variety of celebrity guests.
He has welcomed guests such as Robert Downey Jr., Jamie Foxx, Mel Gibson, Steven Tyler, Mike Tyson, and many different political candidates to the show.
Rogan is a comedian and actor and therefore has a huge interest in anything involving entertainment and film. He often discusses various actors and celebrities on his podcast and is considered to be a movie buff. Therefore, when he recently opened up about the much-maligned film Cats, everyone sat up and listened.
What did Joe Rogan say about ‘Cats’?
On a recent podcast, Joe Rogan talked about Cats and how much money it ended up losing. He referenced the fact that actors who are tied to major flops can often suffer negative career repercussions as a result — labeling such movies “dangerous” for everyone involved with the making of the film.
Rogan used the recent Robert Downey Jr. film Doolittle as an example and stated that Downey Jr. went from the height of fame in Marvel films to making a film that is poorly received, adding that it can majorly affect Downey Jr.’s bankability for future endeavors.
Rogan also called out Cats for being the biggest film financial disaster of the year and discussed the possibility of producers re-editing the film, stating that this is unlikely because then it would be acknowledging what a major flop it was the first time around.
Ultimately, it seems as though Cats might be one of those movies that go down in history as a poorly-executed, bizarre moment in film.
